Back before he
started contributing reviews for Friday’s Forgetten Books, Barry did a number
of reviews for this blog. His review of KIRINYAGA: A FABLE OF UTOPIA by Mike
Resnick was one of those reviews. It runs again today as part of FFB. Make sure
you check out the list here of other great reads when it comes out later today.
KIRINYAGA: A FABLE OF UTOPIA by Mike Resnick
reviewed by Barry Ergang
Among all of the
highly readable, intelligent and well-crafted novels Mike Resnick has written,
I have three favorites: Walpurgis III, The Dark Lady, and the book under
consideration here: Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia (Del
Rey/Ballantine, 1998).
Although Resnick
considers it a novel, it developed from a short story he was asked to write by
Orson Scott Card for an anthology about future Utopian societies. “Because of
my love for Africa,” Resnick explains in an afterword, “and my knowledge of
East Africa in particular, I chose to write about a Kikuyu Utopia. The story
was ‘Kirinyaga,’ and I handed it to Scott at the 1987 World Science Fiction
Convention in Brighton, England, where I stopped for a few days on my way down
to Kenya for another safari....
“...Even before
Scott let me know he was buying it, I took my Kenya safari--and a strange thing
happened. Maybe it was because I had just written ‘Kirinyaga’ a couple of weeks
earlier and it was still fresh in my mind, maybe it was because my subconscious
is a lot smarter than my conscious mind, but whatever the reason, I realized
that ‘Kirinyaga’ was not a stand-alone story, but rather the first chapter in a
book....
“I decided to write
the book a chapter at a time, and to sell each chapter as a short story...but
never to lose sight of the fact that these stories were really chapters in a
novel, which, when completed, would build to a climax as a novel does, and have
a coda after the climax, as so many of my own novels do.”
Spanning the period
from 2123 to 2137, Kirinyaga is narrated by Koriba, a man of Kikuyu
descent who was educated at Cambridge and Yale, who reveres what Kenya and his
culture was and has come to reject what it has become:
“In the beginning,
Ngai lived alone atop the mountain called Kirinyaga. In the fullness of time He
created three sons, who became the fathers of the Maasai, the Kamba, and the
Kikuyu races, and to each son He offered a spear, a bow, and a digging stick.
The Maasai chose the spear, and was told to tend herds on the vast savannah.
The Kamba chose the bow, and was sent to the dense forests to hunt for game.
But Gikuyu, the first Kikuyu, knew that Ngai loved the earth and the seasons,
and chose the digging stick. To reward him for this Ngai not only taught him
the secrets of the seed and the harvest, but gave him Kirinyaga, with its holy
fig tree and rich lands.
“The sons and
daughters of Gikuyu remained on Kirinyaga until the white man came and took
their lands away, and even when the white man had been banished they did not
return, but chose to remain in the cities, wearing Western clothes and using
Western machines and living Western lives. Even I, who am a mundumugu--a
witch doctor--was born in the city. I have never seen the lion or the elephant
or the rhinoceros, for all of them were extinct before my birth; nor have I
seen Kirinyaga as Ngai meant it to be seen, for a bustling, overcrowded city of
three million inhabitants covers its slopes, every year approaching closer and
closer to Ngai’s throne at the summit. Even the Kikuyu have forgotten its true
name, and now know it only as Mount Kenya.”
Along with a group
of like-minded people, Koriba leaves Earth to live on a chartered, terraformed
planetoid called Kirinyaga, where he reverts to the old ways of the Kikuyu. As
their mundumugu, he’s the repository of the collected wisdom and customs
of the tribe, living alone and apart from the rest but participating daily in
their lives, the most feared and venerated among them--feared even by Koinnage,
the paramount chief. Only Koriba possesses the computer that allows him to
communicate with Maintenance, which can change the orbit of Kirinyaga to
maintain or alter climatic conditions. Koriba uses this facility, unknown to
his people, to his own advantage, bringing rain or drought as he sees fit,
often to fulfill his own prophecies and prayers to Ngai.
Each chapter
presents Koriba with a new problem that threatens the Utopia he and the others
have created. Invoking tribal laws with a fanatical stringency, he tries to
find solutions. Not all of the solutions are happy ones, but Koriba is
determined to prevent any change that will corrupt tradition, even if it means
bettering his people’s lot--by what he sees as European standards. Ultimately
he is forced to realize that change in a society is inevitable, that inherent
in the concept of Utopia is stasis and stagnation, and that one man’s idea of
perfection can be another’s agony. Resnick’s artistry lies in portraying
Koriba’s fanaticism so that the reader is simultaneously repelled by and
sympathetic to it. He and the other characters, and the problems that befall
them because of the society they’ve created, will resonate in the reader’s mind
long after the book has been put down.
Easily Mike
Resnick’s finest work, Kirinyaga is, to date, the most honored book in
the history of science fiction. Read it, and you’ll understand why.
Originally published
in Maelstrom, Vol. II, Issue 2, 1999
Barry Ergang ©2007,
2014
PUN-ishing Tales: The Stuff That Groans Are Made On,
Stuffed Shirt, and Dances
of the Disaffected are just some of Barry Ergang's e-books available at Amazon
and Smashwords.
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